AWS Marketplace

Listing an AMI contract product on AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace launched upfront contract pricing on November 17, 2021, which enables  you as a seller to create AMI listings with upfront contract pricing.

With AMI contract pricing, AWS Marketplace bills your customers upfront according to their chosen contract license of a monthly, one-year, or multiyear contract. The customer can agree to automatic renewal of the contract terms when they purchase your product in AWS Marketplace.

They also have the ability to modify the renewal settings, cancel the renewal, or renew the contract for different quantities and durations.

For private offers, you can specify a custom duration in months up to 60 months.

In this blog post, I will outline the entire process of how to publish an AMI contract listing in AWS Marketplace. I will also list all the steps, including generating a product ID, sharing an AMI, completing the product load form, publishing the product to limited, license manager integration, acquiring approval from the seller, and publishing the product to AWS Marketplace. In this blog post, I will also highlight some common mistakes and misconceptions that occur while listing an AMI contract product in AWS Marketplace.

Prerequisites

To list an AMI contract product in AWS Marketplace, you must meet the following prerequisites.

How to list an AMI contract product in AWS Marketplace

  1. Create a unique Product ID for your product in AWS Marketplace (GUID) using the GUID Generator. It will be used to make calls to AWS License Manager APIs.
  2. Complete AWS License Manager integration. It requires you to call AWS License Manager APIs, and it enables your application to determine what customers have procured and provision features accordingly.
  3. Build and share your AMI and make sure that you have given AWS Marketplace access to your AMI.
  4. Navigate to the AWS Marketplace console. Under the Assets tab, choose File upload. Under Product load forms and seller guides, you can download the Commercial Product Form for your product.
  5. Please fill in the downloaded Commercial Product Form with the following details:
    • Provide the Product ID generated in step 1. Provide other required metadata details related to your product, such as Accessibility, SKU, Software by, Title, Short Description, Full Description, Highlight, Product Category, Search Keywords, Resource1_Name, Resource1_URL, Image URL, Product Video, Support Offered, and Refund and Cancellation Policy.
    • Use the AMI generated in step 3 for the us-east-1 AMI ID field in product form.
    • Provide required details related to AMI, such as AMI Virtualization Type, and Architecture. Provide all other required metadata details for your product such as Version Title, Release Notes, and Security Group Rules.
    • Set Pricing Model to Contracts. Provide values for Contracts Entitlement Grace Period & Contracts Price Change Grace Period. The default value for each of these is 0.
    • You must define the Contracts Category, Contracts Unit and Contracts Dimension Allow Multiple Purchases by selecting one of the options from the dropdown. Note that Contracts Category cannot be changed later.
    • Set Contracts Type to Quantified.
    • You must define these fields for pricing dimensions: Contracts DimensionX API Name, Contracts DimensionX Display Name, Contracts DimensionX Description, Contracts DimensionX Quantity, Contracts DimensionX 1-Month Rate, Contracts DimensionX 12-Month Rate, Contracts DimensionX 24-Month Rate, and Contracts DimensionX 36-Month Rate.
  6. After you have completed your Product load form, upload it to the AWS Marketplace console File upload page. In the Description field, enter AMI product with contract pricing.

The Seller Operations team will review your listing and publish your product to limited test product on their side. If everything works during the testing as expected, the Seller Operations team will ask for your approval. If the listing does not work as expected, they will ask you to complete some steps. Once the Seller Operations team verifies that the listing works and asks for and receives your approval, the Seller Operations team publishes your product to the public.

Conclusion and next steps

In this blog post, I listed the steps to list an AMI contract product on the AWS Marketplace. As a next step, I recommend you to publish your first AMI contract product in AWS Marketplace.

About the authors

Pawan KumarPawan Kumar is a Technical Account Manager who focuses on seller operations for AWS Marketplace and is passionate about serverless computing and solving new problems. Outside of work, he enjoys playing and watching cricket.